Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/444

386 The Formation of the Romance Languages.—During the five centuries of their subjection to Rome, the natives of Spain and Gaul forgot their barbarous dialects and came to speak a corrupt Latin. Now in exactly the same way that the dialects of the Celtic tribes of Gaul and of the Celtiberians of Spain had given way to the more refined speech of the Romans, did the rude languages of the Teutons yield to the more cultured speech of the Roman provincials. In the course of two or three centuries after their entrance into the empire, Goths, Lombards, Burgundians, and Franks had, in a large measure, dropped their own tongue, and were speaking that of the people they had subjected. But of course this provincial Latin underwent a great change upon the lips of the mixed descendants of the Romans and Teutons. Owing to the absence of a common popular literature, the changes that took place in one country did not exactly correspond to those going on in another. Hence, in the course of time, we find different dialects springing up, and by about the ninth century the Latin has virtually disappeared as a spoken language, and its place been usurped by what will be known as the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, all more or less resembling the ancient Latin, and all called Romance tongues, because children of the old Roman speech.

Personal Character of the Teutonic Legislation.—The legislation of the barbarians was generally personal instead of territorial, as with us; that is, instead of all the inhabitants of a given country being subject to the same laws, there were different ones for the different classes of society. The Latins, for instance, were subject in private law only to the old Roman code, while the Teutons lived under the rules and regulations which they had brought with them from beyond the Rhine.

Even among themselves the Teutons knew nothing of the modern legal maxim that all should stand equal before the law. The penalty inflicted upon the evil-doer depended, not upon the nature of his crime, but upon his rank, or that of the party injured. Thus slaves and serfs could be beaten and put to death for minor